


Always a Riddle Inside My Head

by ronans



Series: Prompts [26]
Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Panic Attacks, prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-14
Updated: 2015-03-14
Packaged: 2018-03-17 21:33:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3544547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ronans/pseuds/ronans
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><strong>Prompt:</strong> Mickey suffers from anxiety/panic attacks quite frequently – <a href="http://southsidemilkovich.tumblr.com/post/113641384369/so-i-have-prompts-for-you-poppy-you-dont-have-to">cuddlymickey</a></p>
            </blockquote>





	Always a Riddle Inside My Head

**Author's Note:**

> This is set a little bit in the beginning of season 4 and then in the space between season 4 and season 5  
> Title: [In Dreams - Ben Howard](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTEU2-bhYfM)

The worst his breathing gets is when he realises they still haven’t fixed the mirror in the bathroom. He doesn’t ever remember his breathing being so ragged, not ever.

Gripping the sink feels so familiar. Staring at his cracked, warped reflection does not.

He can faintly hear Svetlana still shouting in Russian in the kitchen at his brothers for fucking one thing or another up, but the yells get quieter and quieter, or rather just get drowned out by the ringing in his ears, the sound of his own head.

Bad thoughts creep up on him, like an opaque veil slowly covering his brain section by section. The darkness somehow manages to look like Ian’s face at the same time. He listens to his blood rush, his pulse race, he listens to the silence in the space directly next to him because Ian’s not there.

*

Mickey finds that it doesn’t matter if Ian’s there when it happens or not, because the fact that Ian can’t get up makes them worse, the fact that Ian doesn’t quite look him in the eyes anymore hurts him too.

He’s in the bathroom again, this time only separated from Ian by a couple of walls and a lock that’s barely even attached to the door anymore. He can only focus on the feeling of being helpless.

He’s tried to get Ian out of bed, he’s fucking tried so hard, but he’s not been able to. Ian’s still rolling away from him in the bed whenever he attempts to touch him or talk to him.

He wants to ask for help, holy _fuck_ does he want to ask for help. But he’s a Milkovich. He can’t do it. Instead he wills his thoughts to scream loud enough in his brain and hopes that maybe someone will hear his fucking silent S.O.S.

The house is too quiet, and he should be used to it by now, but he’s not. Mickey lowers his head to the rim of the sink and smacks it against the porcelain a few times until he’s sure there’ll be a bruise there.

A shot or five of vodka seems to quell the flutter in his belly.

*

Ian’s up now. He walks around. He goes for jogs. He changes the baby. He kisses Mickey.

Mickey doesn’t tell him that sometimes he locks himself away and can’t breathe thinking about how much Ian’s scaring him when he looks past the thick cloud of relief that Ian’s home again.

Ian’s fine, Ian’s smiling. He kisses Mickey on the cheek and leaves the house to go to work. It makes Mickey shudder if he thinks too hard about Ian’s destination, so he decides to try to bury the feelings with getting ready to go down to the Alibi, shrugging on his coat because winter’s still not fully receded.

Work’s mundane, and just consists of him shouting his frustration at customers that get too handsy, and using the fact that he’s on edge to his advantage, needling a little extra out of Kev and getting Svetlana to stay on a little later with him because he’s got to deal with some particularly gross fucker.

He gets home late, a lot later than Ian's due back. He expects Ian to already be asleep, but he’s not in bed. Ian should have been home hours ago but he can’t find him. It’s the last fucking thing he wants to do right now, but he’d rather be out actively trying to find Ian than stay home and allow himself to wallow in the anxiety that’s starting to attach itself to his brain again.

Walking to the train station doesn’t calm him much, but he keeps his hands busy by lighting cigarette after cigarette, and the nicotine battles the anxiousness with some tranquillity. But it never wins, because the dominating question in his mind is _what if Ian’s not there_?

It’s fucking heart breaking that the answer to the question is that he’s not. And just like that, Mickey’s completely crumbling again and trying to find his way home on shaky legs.

When he wakes up in the morning – or rather, opens his eyes after pretending to get in a few hours’ sleep – and the other side of the bed’s still cold, he’s instantly jittery again.

He doesn’t think twice about throwing on his clothes and instantly charging over to the Gallagher house with a buzz of nervousness in his blood and bones.

Fiona lets the door swing open and doesn’t even offer a greeting to Mickey, because seeing him is so normal now. She treks back through the living room and into the kitchen, and Mickey assumes she’s continuing to rummage through a handbag as she’d been doing before he’d arrived.

‘You need somethin’, Mickey?’ she asks, without looking up, when all Mickey does is go to stand on the other side of the counter rather than go up the stairs to collect more of Ian’s things as she'd expected him to.

Mickey sinks his front teeth into his bottom lip, because the way Fiona’s talking means that Ian’s not here. He presses on anyway, because he doesn’t know what’ll happen if he doesn’t talk.

‘Ian was supposed to be home a while back, but he ain’t home- he, yeah, didn’t come home last night. Figured he might be here?’ Mickey explains shakily. His lungs are rattling and his breath’s getting harder to control.

Fiona seems to pick up on this, pausing her actions to glance up at him. ‘Shit. You okay?’

‘No I’m not fuckin’ okay,’ he hisses, before putting the back of his hand over his mouth and inhaling and exhaling through his nose, closing his eyes against the natural light in the kitchen because darkness always seems better to focus on.

‘He’ll be okay, Mickey, I’m sure of it. We just gotta wait this out,’ she says. When Mickey opens his eyes he catches the tail end of her shrug. ‘You already try lookin’ for him?’

‘Yeah, I went… I went to the club.’ His breath hitches on the last word and he’s so fucking angry that he can’t stifle this in front of Fiona. ‘Fuck. _Fuck_.’

Fiona looks worried, and a little bit like she doesn’t know what the fuck to do, wide eyes, hovering hands, but a firm voice.

‘This a thing that happens often?' Mickey doesn't answer, Fiona sighs. 'When did this stuff with you start?’

He doesn’t want to tell her when it started. He’d thought he was over it. It had used to happen as a kid and then he’d toughened himself the fuck up, but apparently stuff like this doesn’t just disappear. Triggers come in the most horrific of forms and he doesn’t want to linger on the flashbacks, doesn’t want to touch the memory with a ten foot pole or try to conjure up a coherent explanation for this stranger in front of him.

‘Mickey?’

His gaze flicks back up to Fiona and she’s got such a warm stare, it’s just freaking him out more.

The second time he’d broken down had been after Ian had left him on the roof. The gun had run out of ammo and so had Mickey’s sanity.

Fiona purses her lips and shoves her bag to the side so she can lean her forearms on the counter and level Mickey with a solid stare.

‘Mickey.’

‘What the fuck do you want?’ he growls, and he feels like he’s gonna hurl.

Fiona doesn’t seem fazed. ‘I wanna know you’re okay. You dealing with this stuff with Ian?’

No. No he’s fucking not. He can’t take it that this is probably all his faut, all his fucked up family’s fault, it’s _his fucking fault for getting involved with Ian and dragging him into his fucked up life_.

He doesn’t know how he ended up sitting at the Gallagher breakfast table with his head between his knees and Fiona rubbing his back.

‘It’s not your fault, Mickey.’

He also didn’t know he had a tendency to blurt out his fucked up feelings because he doesn’t have control over any of this shit.

‘It’s fuckin’ genetics. Just ask Ian; I keep telling him that,’ Fiona says, before chuckling bitterly. ‘Actually, don’t ask Ian.’

There’s no sound for a long time after that. It gives Mickey the time he needs to be mildly okay again. He leaves the house without another word and when he gets back to his own home, Ian’s waiting with a smile and an explanation about how he’d crashed at his friend’s place after a party. Mickey doesn’t have the energy to look into it. He presses his relief into Ian’s skin and leaves love in the shape of nails gripping into Ian’s flesh.

*

‘Hey, Fiona asked me if you were doin’ okay today when we were on our run,’ Ian says after a long silence between them as they watched the TV. Svetlana’s feeding Yev in the kitchen, Iggy’s out dealing, Mandy’s fuck knows where; they may as well be on their own. Mickey still gulps and feels his skin crawl.

‘Why the fuck’s she askin’ you that?’

Ian tilts his head and smiles at the side of Mickey’s face, he can _feel_ the stare. ‘I don’t know, you tell me.’

Mickey swallows and he notices his stomach start to itch with nausea. ‘Why the hell would I know?’

Ian frowns at the way Mickey’s voice is suddenly thick. It makes his heart rate spike, and not in the way it usually does when Ian’s actually fucking looking at him. ‘I mean, I know Fi doesn’t mind having you around now, but she’s never asked after you before.’

He clenches his teeth and forces out his words. They coagulate and almost choke him. ‘I went to yours when you didn’t come home the other night.’

And just like that, Mickey’s head’s between his knees again, and he thinks he might throw up, whether that be yells or bile, he doesn’t fucking care, he just wants to eject everything.

‘Fuck, are you okay?’ Ian asks through the cotton wool that seems to have stuffed up Mickey’s ears.

Ian’s hands are on him, on his back, on his sides, on his hair, and Mickey wants to flinch away at first, but then he realises his breathing’s calming down a little bit.

Where Fiona had rubbed his back, it’d felt like she was scalding him, where Ian rubs his back, it feels something like safety, something like someone’s finally heard his silent fucking screams.

When he eventually is able to sit up again, Ian swallows his panic with a kiss.

**Author's Note:**

> [I'm going to be taking prompts until the end of March but I have a load in my inbox already so it may take me a while to get to it if that's okay](http://southsidemilkovich.tumblr.com)


End file.
